STYLE

STYLE; An Eye for The Ladies

Published: March 30, 2003

Editors' Note Appended

(Page 2 of 2)

R.C.: Yeah, in the late 60's Playboy courted me. I had gone there with my sketchbook in the early 60's looking for work, but they weren't interested. After I got to be well known, I found that I could do exactly what I wanted and have it published. So, why do I need restrictions and directions from Hugh Hefner?

L.E.: Did you ever go to the Playboy Mansion?

R.C.: Yeah. I found it rather alienating and dull. I was in my 20's, and all these guys in their 40's were dazzled by the scene. I thought it was corny. And the girls seemed barely human to me. I couldn't talk to them.

R.A.: Did you ever draw anything from photographs in Playboy?

R.C.: No. Those girls don't interest me at all.

R.A.: You describe an innocent Catholic girl as your ideal.

R.C.: Not innocent but wholesome. The average, regular, wholesome, kind of unstudied, artless sort of regular girl that you find in America.

R.A.: But you draw them larger than life -- Amazonian. How come?

R.C.: I don't know. Maybe I need 15 years on the couch and some Freudian psychoanalyst to figure it out.

R.A.: How do you feel about all the interest in your work from the art world?

R.C.: It's been very interesting and surprising. I mean, you get the impression that there's some kind of desolate, intellectual process going on in the art world. Look at magazines like Artforum -- you ever try reading that stuff? They have their own language -- Artspeak. When you get inside that world and start talking to the people who actually operate in it, it's not that smart, really. It's not as smart as it seems from the outside.

L.E.: It's really different from the cartoon world.

R.C.: A totally different world. The fine-art world knows very little about the cartoon world. Even my pal Paul Morris, God love him, he knows nothing about the cartoon world. He's very knowledgeable about fine art but has no idea who Krazy Kat is, and he's like the Leonardo da Vinci of the cartoon world.

R.A.: Well, you're probably the only one that's made that crossover.

R.C.: One of the few. You know, it's funny the way things are now. It's all mixed together. I mean Matthew Barney, what is he? He's a show-biz guy mixing it all together. Or Art Spiegelman. He's got a Pulitzer Prize. So, comics spill into the art world, and it spills into the literary world. I even spill over into porno.

L.E.: There's a whole new generation that's actually growing up with cartoons as art. It's not like us growing up going to museums. It's about graffiti and cartoons. All these kids want to be animators now.

R.C.: Yeah, that whole graffiti thing and hip-hop world, that's a big influence. It doesn't interest me at all. I don't like any of it.

R.A.: So are there any artists that really turn you on?

R.C.: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Bruegel, my main man. Most of the stuff that interests me is from old masters, but not that schmaltzy, puffy mythology or whatever; that doesn't interest me. But when I was at the National Gallery in London, we walked into this room with these Hans Holbeins staring at me, and I got sucked in time. I was suddenly in the room with him while he was painting.

R.A.: And those are your kind of women.

R.C.: Actually, when it comes down to it, there are not a whole lot of artists in history that knew how to draw a pleasing-looking woman. I think most of them were interested in men. You know, Michelangelo and all that, they loved to draw beautiful men. The heroic male is much more important than the female.

R.A.: It's funny, because most people call you a misogynist. But in fact it's obvious you love women.

R.C.: It's a strong love-hate thing with women. Very complicated. I can really make a case against women. A lot of my comics continually plug hideously hostile stuff toward women. When I was young, I just had a lot of anger I had to get out. I don't have an urge to draw that kind of stuff anymore.

L.E.: You created Fritz the Cat, Keep On Truckin', Mister Natural -- everybody thinks that you are rolling in dough.

R.C.: I oughta be rich. But, you know, if you don't spend all your time looking after money, somebody else will. The guys who look after money, they're the ones who get the money.

R.A.: I read that you turned down $100,000 to do a car ad.

R.C.: When it comes down to it, those people will want this done and that changed, and before you know it you've lost all your dignity and integrity and you're just groveling before these people to get their money. Plus I just know that once you sell out, you kind of lose your -- it's hard to explain.

L.E.: Well, it seems as if you just never want to lose your freedom.

R.C.: Well, yeah, and I got spoiled in underground comics, where I could draw my craziest sex fantasies and get them published instead of flushing them down the toilet, that was incredible to me.

R.A.: Robert, you're obviously not into the celebrity thing and you're not into the art thing and you don't really care about money, so what motivates you?

R.C.: The work itself is what motivates me. I like my own stuff, you know? I like the way it looks. I do it to please myself first.

Editors' Note: April 3, 2003, Thursday The Style pages of The Times Magazine on Sunday featured an interview with the artist R. Crumb by Lisa Eisner and Román Alonso. It referred to Mr. Crumb's new book, ''Gotta Have'em: Portraits of Women by R. Crumb,'' which is being published by Greybull Press. The owners of the press are Ms. Eisner and Mr. Alonso. If the magazine editors had known of that connection, they would have selected a different writer or, at a minimum, would have acknowledged the connection.